Laurynas Zabulis, CFO at Nord Security, is playing a starring role at one of Lithuania’s most famous success stories. Cybersecurity unicorn, Nord Security, went from being bootstrapped to a $3billion valuation in 12 years. Laurynas became CFO after a stint at Surfshark (which  merged with NordVPN in 2022). His achievements at NordSecurity include leading the first funding round for $100m – technically a “seed” round he says  (unusually the bootstrapped enjoyed revenues of over $100m when it approached investors). Laurynas is also building a purpose-driven finance team of 90 talented people across the department to deliver a “forward looking finance function” that propels growth at the leading startup. Laurynas has set out a powerful mission for FP&A whose vision to “earn respect from stakeholders at the company”, “have a seat at the decision-making table”, and use data and detailed knowledge of growth drivers to “make strategic decisions that drive our business”.

In this episode:

• Moving back to my home country of Lithuania, from London. after success in investment banking (and not listening to those who tried to talk him out of it) 
• Battling the “negative connotations” of VPNs when talking to investors and and building conviction around the management and culture of the company 
• Bringing finance to strategic decision-making at the company including  a CFO tech stack focused on “availability of data and of analytics in a more timely fashion”
• Investing in building finance relations with stakeholders in the company (from engineers to product development)
• Building a finance team of 90 people based on data, tech, and stakeholder engagement
• FP&A analysis powering painful decisions to sunset certain products 
• Our FP&A team structure at Nord Security and the results we expect
• Benefit of working with founders and the culture this provides
• The Lithuanian tech ecosystem and finance opportunities 

Connect with Laurynas on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurynas-zabulis-0206333/